Thinking of using a high resolution 7" OLED display for all the instruments in my next car. Anyone done this?

Rob

We use the smaller OLED's in some of the electonic devices we produce. What is it you want to know? Do you know how to make the driver board for the screen, or to write the software to display all the information you require?

You need to keep a close eye on the operating conditions for display devices, generally the two important ones are min temperature(stop working when cold) and visibility angles and sunlight readability/ For this reason, until very recently, a lot of cars still used a basic dot-matrix style led display etc. However display capabilites have imporved markedly (thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices) so you can now get some pretty good stuff that could be "automotive" rated

I was playing with a Raspberry Pi this weekend, thinking it could be used as the basis of the instruments and display. It has HDMI 1080p output.

I've been looking at my perfect instrument pod design for a while and though the OLED display would be the best way forward, providing better clarity and layout, and the ability to update the instruments later.

Ideally you need to be able to programme, probably FPGA chips for your application. Generating moving graphics isn't a simple task (unless you know what you're doing). You can buy in the expertise, but it's expensive, or you can do it the hard way and learn it yourself.

If you want, I can ask our engineering dept for some pointers to get you started.

.What you want to do may not be that complicated, we're currently looking at generating video on our screens, which sounds easy, but when you have a digital source, and you have to somehow generate a moving image on a bare screen with it, easy is not the way to describe it. A year's worth of development plus costs that you really don't want to know, and we're just about getting there. Admittedly, what we're doing is very niche, and has to be to specific broadcast standards, so there are various 'standards' everything has to adhere to.

There may be ways of shortcutting it though, so as said, if you want me to find out further details, let me know.

Out of interest too, in relation to what the other poster mentioned, our screens have worked at considerably below zero Celcius, but we had a reported (temporary) failure in a desert situation with someone using it in direct sunlight in very high ambient temperatures (like 45 C plus).

I want to generate the whole display in HTML5 and it will be moving/animayed in HTML5 too. Come back in a week to this test page and you will see what I mean:http://www.robcollingridge.com/400kg/build/instrum...Note: This page will only work in a browser that supports HTML5!

I simply want to use a low power processor to do it. Currently using a Raspeberry Pi device running Linux and this outputs what I need as 1080p and via HDMI.

I'm not looking to do this in scale or on a commercial basis. I'm planning a one-off car for me :-)

Would a display like this pass an IVA test? That's all that matters to me.

I don't think it's too difficult a task to do a display screen, because a lot of it will simply not be actually moving over any significantly short time period. Even things like rev counters take seconds to scan across the rev range, which isn't going to trouble even a fairly tardy refresh rate.

The snag is, you need to scale the 1080p output, which is the tricky bit. Unless you find a 1080p screen, but even then, they don't come with screen drivers generally, so you've got to figure that bit out.

I wasn't expecting you to be doing it on a commercial level (we're barely managing that), but still, it's not necessarily simple.

I'll be curious to see how you get on, please keep us informed.

In my experience (not to point a finger at anyone here, but based on actual discussions with people in my field of work) the people who say 'it's easy, can't be that hard, just do this, just do that' have no idea whatsoever about what they're talking about.

Our engineering dept has been looking at the Raspberry things with interest, as they look set to revolutionise the small and individual processor market, making stuff like this accessible for the everyman (the way we've been doing stuff to date is the preserve of businesses or very well funded individuals).

There may, of course, be scope for a commercial application of such a device, the kitcar and modified car markets spring to mind as immediate examples.

Have a look at the dash on the Ducati panigale for inspiration, personally I would think very carefully about using HTML 5 for anything automotive maybe see what other languages there are for rasp pi c++/python/vba clone.

Unfortunately it didn't build the community I'd have hoped so it's kinda dead in there, you might be able to find more dashes on the Mp3Car forum.

I want a bespoke layout and I'm not interested in 3D graphics, superflous colours and the like. I want simplicity and clarity, in keeping with the rest of the car. This is pretty much the final layout and design as I want it to be:

The snag is, you need to scale the 1080p output, which is the tricky bit. Unless you find a 1080p screen, but even then, they don't come with screen drivers generally, so you've got to figure that bit out.

I wasn't expecting you to be doing it on a commercial level (we're barely managing that), but still, it's not necessarily simple.

I'll be curious to see how you get on, please keep us informed.

In my experience (not to point a finger at anyone here, but based on actual discussions with people in my field of work) the people who say 'it's easy, can't be that hard, just do this, just do that' have no idea whatsoever about what they're talking about.

Our engineering dept has been looking at the Raspberry things with interest, as they look set to revolutionise the small and individual processor market, making stuff like this accessible for the everyman (the way we've been doing stuff to date is the preserve of businesses or very well funded individuals).

There may, of course, be scope for a commercial application of such a device, the kitcar and modified car markets spring to mind as immediate examples.

OT but who do you work for? I've used/use a few slow/hyper motion camera's at work, never knew a PH fan worked there!?

Which cameras? I work on outside broadcasts so only use broadcast quality stuff...

I don't use them myself, I specialise in RF cameras and point to point links these days. However, the Arri Hi-Motion has been doing the rounds for a little whilen (I recall seeing it's debut in Beijing 2008), although there was another system that I don't recall the name of on the SKY Rugby stuff. That has just been ousted in favour of another system (from the US I think), but again, I'm not entirely sure of the name, it could be Fletcher.

Vision Engineer/guarantee vision, the Arri motion has come on loads recently, getting nice pics out of it now even at decent frame rates. I've used all of the big hitters, its Arri that we seem to use most on Sky stuff at the minute.

Vision Engineer/guarantee vision, the Arri motion has come on loads recently, getting nice pics out of it now even at decent frame rates. I've used all of the big hitters, its Arri that we seem to use most on Sky stuff at the minute.

I'm guessing you do football? I tend to work on the rugby, darts etc, football jobs for me are few and far between. We don't have the arri on the rugby anymore.

I want a bespoke layout and I'm not interested in 3D graphics, superflous colours and the like. I want simplicity and clarity, in keeping with the rest of the car. This is pretty much the final layout and design as I want it to be:

It's laid out and scaled for a 1280 x 720p screen for now. I just have to change the scaling factor to make it 1920 x 1080p. Working on the animation aspects now :-)

I think you are missing the point, you can design *ANYTHING* with that software, so you can build your demo dash exactly as it is now in that software

Have you looked in the dashboard forum of the ones people have already designed? From the simplistic/clean (such as yours) to the one where someone replicated the Nissan GT-R dash or the RX8 dash? It's entirely bespoke as you say, you don't *need* to use '3D graphics' or 'superfluous colours'.

The software already exists and like I said, running it on a cheap Andriod tablet mounted in the dash is probably a far simpler solution (and cheaper!) than trying to recreate the wheel yourself.

I'm an electronics developer, and use xOLEDs from time to time. I have to say that they still have the feel of an immature technology. No problem with using it for smaller instruments (although they are prone to pixels "burning" in/out) but have you managed to source a high res OLED panel? The cost, dimensions, inerface etc will then dictate the rest of the project. They aren't anywhere near as easy to source as LCDs.

Zad, have you noticed any problems with OLED's fading? Some of our products with these screens fitted have seen the screen begin to apparently fade, and not particularly uniformly. These screens aren't racking up huge hours in terms of 'on' time, but it seems they aren't capable of reaching their predicted X,000 hour life that we were led to believe.

We're currently in discussion with the manufacturer about it, but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced it.